Ty Segall

The always-surprising SoCal garage rocker talks fuzz, SG-based blasphemy and the peculiar benefits of not writing songs on guitar

- BY GREGORY ADAMS

WHEN TY SEGALL and collaborator Matt Yoka started writing the lyrics to the former's new and 17th solo album, Possession, the pair set off to present a series of “quintessentially American stories.”

To that end, Segall says the record's acoustic orchestral-punk freakout “Alive” was inspired by the infamously cannibalistic Donner Party case of the mid 19th century before transforming into a broader look at man's battle against the elements. “Shoplifter,” a slow-building strummer that leads up toward a screaming three-way sax-off and a barbershop vocal section, empathizes with a sticky-fingered character going through economic turmoil — though Segall says he still feels guilty about the candy bar he boosted out of a convenience store when he was a kid.

One of its most relatable moments – for some musicians, at least — comes halfway through the shag carpet-lined Seventies rocker "Fantastic Tomb,” where Segall punctuates a laundry list of down-on-your-luck scenarios with a reveal that someone's “last guitar just broke.” There's lived experience in the line, with the prolific musician telling Guitar World of the many cracked fretboards and headstock snafus he's faced over the years. No horror story quite compares to the time he accidentally smashed his ’65 Gibson Melody Maker, a beloved gift he received after graduating college.

“I'd toured with it for about a year,” he says from his current home and studio base in South Pasadena, “but one show I had it leaned up against my amp, and [when] I went to go say hi to somebody, I stepped on the stage really hard and the guitar fell over and exploded. The headstock shattered into five pieces; it was not just a crack. That was sad.”

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